Jourdan Anderson

When noted economist Chris Blattman mentioned it, my skepticism waned considerably. Surely a man with as finely-tuned a Crap Detector as Dr. Blattman's wouldn't be taken in by a clever internet hoax. Right?

Next, I found some insight from that old bastion of fact-finding reliability: The Snopes Message Board. (Remember when Snopes was the first place you went to disprove something like this?) Amongst the chatter, a theme emerges that's been hitherto under-emphasized: the letter is authentic, inasmuch as it was published in a couple newspapersin 1865, but these accounts are ambiguous as to whether Anderson had a collaborator.

It doesn't matter to me whether Anderson himself wrote the letter with a quill and ink and his own five fingers, or mentioned a few broad ideas to be transcribed by the Ken Burns of his day. The important points are:

The letter was most certainly written and widely published in the 1860's.

There was a man named Jourdan Anderson, who lived in Ohio after being freed from slavery.